Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing The Brain vs Xmind, the Slant community recommends Xmind for most people. In the question“What are the best mind mapping tools?” Xmind is ranked 1st while The Brain is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Xmind is:
XMind's interface is uncluttered and easy to overview. It allows for quick, intuitive navigation and use. For example, Enter adds more items to a node, Tab adds a child node, all commonly used shortcuts works as expected, etc.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Cloud syncing
With an account for syncing on their servers, you can run the brain on multiple computers.
Pro Good support
Worthwhile support is offered, especially for those that pay for a subscription.
Pro Clean, easy to use UI
XMind's interface is uncluttered and easy to overview. It allows for quick, intuitive navigation and use. For example, Enter adds more items to a node, Tab adds a child node, all commonly used shortcuts works as expected, etc.
Pro Free and open source
XMind, except for Plus and Pro features, is open source with code available on GitHub.
Pro A wide variety of templates available
XMind has preset templates available that allow getting started quickly. There are templates for project planning, status reports, dashboards, organizational charts, swot analysis, timelines, decision trees, weekly plans, among others.
Pro Extremely flexible
XMind is capable of displaying information in a multitude of ways (classic mindmaps, charts, timelines, decision trees, etc), it can add labels, clip-art, notes, files, audio recordings, it can then take the project and export it in a variety of ways including an synced gantt chart.
Pro Built-in Gantt view
XMind has a build-in Gantt chart view and with the pro version, XMind allows synchronizing it.
Pro Can copy entire hierarchy to/from Word with a simple copy/paste action
XMind allows quickly copying over structure of the mindmap as a tab-indented list starting at the node selected. It can also take a tab-indented list and create a mindmap from it.
Pro Task management (pro)
Pro Very good performance
The app is incredible complete, flexible, and fast.
Pro Cross-platform
Works on Windows, OS X and Linux.
Pro Local Network Sharing
Pro XMind Plus & Pro adds more export options
XMind Plus & Pro can export to Word, PowerPoint, PDF, SVG & MindManager.
Pro Audio recording (pro)
Cons
Con Expensive
There is either a $15 a month subscription fee or a license that ranges from $219 to $299. There is a 30 day free trial for those who would like to test it before subscribing or purchasing, but overall to use this app it can be pricey.
Con High learning curve
There is a little bit of a learning curve with all software, and this is no exception.
Con Expensive
Con No offline capability
If the Internet goes down, you cannot use this XMind. This is painful on the iOS phone where data link must be online before you can use it.
Con Newer versions become heavyweight and bloated
Even though there are more features, starting with version 8 application is very unstable. A lot of users still prefer version 7.5 or 6.5.
Con Used to offer their NOT-free products
Con FreeMind files sometimes don't work
XMind claims it can read FreeMind files, but certain .mm file saves from Freeplane or MindMup generate an error on open.
